On Thursday 26th November Alan Cossey and I will be doing a joint presentation at the UK Access User Group National Seminar demonstrating the new features in Access 2010 (Alan) and Access Services in SharePoint 2010 (me). 

I have to say there’s some really clever technology  at work here and if you are working with Access now and maybe already hooking up SharePoint lists to Access 2007 then the new features in Access 2010/SharePoint 2010 are worth a look.  One thing you will notice very early on – Access macros have a new lease of life!

Booking info can be seen here and you can download the full agenda details here.

Recently I’ve been involved in the development of a SharePoint 2007 solution using InfoPath and Forms Services.  The purpose of the solution was collection of employee questionnaire data using one of several forms designed as a multi-page survey.  InfoPath was chosen because the process needed to make use of SharePoint workflows, which are not supported with survey responses.  Also, the survey form needed to behave differently depending upon whether an employee or their manager was completing it.

I wanted to use this post to document some of the things I learnt during the development process.

Only Use Custom Code if Rules and Views Can’t Do the Job: You can do an awful lot with InfoPath Rules and Views to give the user a good experience when completing a form.  You also have the added advantage that when publishing your browser-compatible form to SharePoint Forms Services, you don’t have to deploy it as an Administrator-approved form.  Over at EnduserSharePoint, Paul Galvin has posted a useful starter template for InfoPath which includes views for handling successful submission and discarding the form.  And there are other useful InfoPath tips on Paul’s blog.

“Wizard” Style Forms Work Well Using Views: Using [Next>] and [<Back] buttons combined with views, you can create a nice “wizard” style user interface for your form.  Here’s a nice post from the MS InfoPath team on this topic.

But You can Only Validate a Maximum of 5 Fields Using a Rule: This is one of the issues which required use of custom code.  On our “wizard” style form, there are 7 questions per page, and the user should not be able to move to the next page until all 7 have been answered.  So we ended up putting validation code on the “click” event of each “[Next>]” button.  This tutorial from DevExpertise explains how it’s done.  It ended up as one of the reasons for a custom code requirement – I guess it might also be possible to to this using XPath, but as we also ended up needing code for another feature (see below), we used custom code here.

If You Want to Pass URL Parameters to your Browser Based Form, You Need to Write Some Code: For this solution, a manager could be assigned multiple questionnaires to complete (one for each person they are managing).  So we wanted to pass the ID of the employee into the new form, then this would be used to look up employee details on a secondary data connection.  Turns out that you can only read URL (querystring) parameters using code.  Here’s a post from the InfoPath Team showing how to pass/retrieve these parameters.

Use Site Columns for Promoted InfoPath Fields: Our solution required two different forms to be available as content types in the same forms library.  If both of these forms use the same set of promoted columns, your life will be a lot simpler if you first create the columns you want to promote as a set of site columns specific to the solution.  If you don’t, and you deploy the forms to different servers, you can end up with multiple “Microsoft InfoPath” site columns with same name but different IDs.  Also, we wanted to promote some InfoPath text to SharePoint multiline text columns.   This doesn’t seem to be possible using the default “Create New Column in this library” option but can be done using site columns.

Ensuring your Submitted Forms Have Unique Names: You need to ensure that the submitted form has a unique name.  Here are couple of items you might find useful – Hannah Scott: Submit InfoPath forms to SharePoint with Unique File Name and  SharePoint User Group UK Submit InfoPath with unique filename using SharePoint Library ID.

Centrally Managed Data Connections Make it Easy to Switch from Dev to Test to Production: Converting your SharePoint data connections to centrally managed ones makes it much simpler to move your solution between servers or web applications.  To make this work you will either first need to use a data connection library for data connections, then upload these using Central Admin, or use this UDC File Authoring Tool (which is also an InfoPath template).  More information here and here.

If You Are New to InfoPath, Read Paul Culmsee’s “Humble Leave Form” Series”:  Paul Culmsee of CleverWorkarounds fame has written an amusing and useful series on InfoPath called A Tribute To The Humble Leave Form.  There are 7 parts to the series so far, all based around a leave form for the Springfield Nuclear Plant.  In part 5 Paul discusses using the UserProfile web service to get more useful info about the user completing the form. 

And More Information on Getting User Information Without Code: Here are a couple more posts on getting user information from Itay Shakury and Clayton Cobb.

I hope others embarking on InfoPath/Forms Services projects find some of this useful!

I’ve been really busy over the past few weeks, so haven’t had much time for new blog posts.  So I thought I would roll up some related news into one post, as all of the information is about Business Intelligence, data and dashboards.

First, if you are interested in how browser-based dashboards can be used to show a company’s financial data, take a look at Microsoft Investor Central.  Here’s a snippet showing what it looks like right now:

If you visit the page you will see it makes heavy use of Silverlight to let you zoom in on and manipulate the charts.  Thanks to Patrick Husting for the original heads up on this.

And while on the subject of dashboards, can I also recommend this demonstration PerformancePoint site from Richard Lees, which has loads of examples using Analysis Services, data mining techniques and PerformancePoint scorecards.

Last week Microsoft made all sorts of announcements about Office 2010.  I’ve been taking a look at Excel 2010, and in particular the new data presentation options.  It looks like this release will have some worthwhile new Business Intelligence features.  As well as Gemini, which will I believe be available as a separate add-in, this will be the first release which will let you create Sparklines, those little word-sized graphics which I first blogged about in 2007.

Here’s how they look:

You can read more about how they work in Excel 2010 over on the Microsoft Excel Team blog here and even more here.

Finally, I’d like to mention the Guardian Newspaper’s Data Store.  This is a fairly unique exercise by a national newspaper to make datasets they have created, frequently to support news stories, publicly available.  Most of these can be accessed as Google spreadsheets, also downloaded.  As well as being interesting datasets in their own right, they are incredibly useful if you want to populate demonstration dashboards, load sample lists, or create training exercises.  You can keep up to date on what they are doing on their blog or on Twitter.

Originally this post was going to be a lot longer – the plan was to go into lots of detail about how to customise the SharePoint 2007 or Search Server Advanced Search page and extend the Result Type drop-down to allow selection of Acrobat PDF Files.  Then I saw this post over at Get the Point which contains links to several very good articles from Ben Curry and Bill English describing how to customise the SharePoint 2007 Search Centre. 

One of their articles, which you can download as a PDF file, is called Customize the Advanced Search Page in an Office SharePoint Server 2007 Search Center Site and it covers the initial customisation options for Advanced Search web parts very well.  So all I need to do is explain how to use their techniques to add PDF documents as a Result Type.

If we create a document in Microsoft Word 2007, we use standard document properties to create searchable metadata like this:

And once the document has been uploaded to SharePoint and successfully crawled, those properties become searchable through the Advanced Search page.

Equally, an Acrobat PDF document may contain properties.  Here is the same document converted to PDF, this time showing the properties in Adobe Reader:

So how do we make it easier for our SharePoint users to search only within PDF files, and for specific document properties?  Well, as you will see if you download and read the article mentioned above, the trick is to add a new ResultType for PDF files in the properties XML.  NOTE – of course all of this assumes that your SharePoint server is already successfully crawling and indexing Acrobat PDF files…

The “properties” section which determines what can be selected for Result Type “Word Documents” looks like this:

<ResultType DisplayName="Word Documents" Name="worddocuments">
    <Query>FileExtension=’doc’ Or FileExtension=’docx’ Or FileExtension=’dot’</Query>
    <PropertyRef Name="Author" />
    <PropertyRef Name="DocComments"/>
    <PropertyRef Name="Description" />
    <PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/>
    <PropertyRef Name="FileName" />
    <PropertyRef Name="Size" />
    <PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/>
    <PropertyRef Name="Path" />
    <PropertyRef Name="Created" />
    <PropertyRef Name="Write" />
    <PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" />
    <PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" />
    <PropertyRef Name="Title"/>
    <PropertyRef Name="Manager" />
    <PropertyRef Name="Company"/>
</ResultType>

Now, not all of the same properties can be found in a PDF document.  In the test PDF document I created using the Office 2007 PDF add-in, the properties I was able to successfully search in SharePoint were Keywords, Name, Size, Subject, Created Date, Last Modified Date and Title.  And this is the ResultType I added to my Properties XML to make this work:

<ResultType DisplayName="PDF Documents" Name="acrobatpdf">
    <Query>FileExtension=’pdf’</Query>
    <PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/>
    <PropertyRef Name="FileName" />
    <PropertyRef Name="Size" />
    <PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/>
    <PropertyRef Name="Created" />
    <PropertyRef Name="Write" />
    <PropertyRef Name="Title"/>
</ResultType>

All of which needs to be added above the </ResultTypes> closing tag at the end of the properties.  Once this was in place, I could select PDF result Types and search by property, like so:

One word of caution if you plan to edit the Properties XML in the web part – the text editor you get in the Web part is pretty rudimentary, as you can see here

So if you aren’t familiar with XML and don’t have another XML editor to paste the text into, you might want to copy and paste the original text into a notepad file before you start.

By the way, if your documents are currently stored in Office format, and you’re looking for a solution which manages conversion to PDF and transfers metadata across, take a look at the Office to PDF Conversion Solution Accelerator from Bamboo Solutions – more info here.

Update 12 June 09 – Another SharePoint add-on worth a look if you are converting Office documents to PDFs is Muhimbi PDF Coverter for SharePoint.  Right now it looks like you can convert to PDF from various Word document versions as well as RTF and plain text, although I understand more file types will follow.  They also have a feature which lets you do the PDF conversion from a SharePoint Designer Workflow which looks like it could be useful.  Muhimibi also tell me you get the option to copy metadata across when you create the PDF. I plan to try this out and hopefully post about it soon.

Often when I’m demonstrating things like SharePoint document libraries, I find I need to create a new Word document and quickly fill it with some placeholder text, ideally real text rather than the usual “asdadsadasdasda” that you end up typing otherwise.

For a long time I’ve used a little feature in Microsoft Word, whereby you can type =rand() and hit enter to generate some placeholder paragraphs, or =rand(paragraphs,sentences) to specify a number paragraphs and sentences.  Even though this feature has been around in Word for several versions now, most people still don’t know it exists.  One thing that has changed in Word 2007 is that the generated paragraphs are a little bit of Word 2007 help, like this sample -

On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document …

In previous versions of Word, using =rand() generated multiple paragraphs of The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog which is a pangram containing all letters of the alphabet.  Well, thanks to this post on the Microsoft Word Team blog I’ve discovered you can still use the “quick brown fox” version – you just have to use =rand.old() instead. 

The Word Team’s post also mentions another function (new to me) which can be used in Word to generate Lorem Ipsum text, using = lorem() – again, quite useful for generating placeholder text in documents, web pages and SharePoint web parts.

News in the past week of plans for the next version of SQL Server.  This previously had the code name Kilimanjaro, but now becomes SQL Server 2008 R2.  I’m not really sure I understand the Microsoft’s logic behind product naming.  As far as I can see SQL Server 2008 R2 will be released in H1 2010 – at around the same time that we will start to see other new products such as SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010…

Anyhoo, you can take a look at some of the new features and services on this SQL Server R2 page, and you can also sign up for notification when it gets to Community Technology Preview stage.  I’ve also heard that this release of SQL Server will, like other future server products, be 64-bit only.  As well as some interesting screenshots the page has a clever “silent movie” style video:

It does look like R2 will get some nice new Business Intelligence and reporting features.  One of these is currently known as “Project Gemini”,  which uses in-memory database technology and column-oriented processing techniques.  This can be combined with a forthcoming Excel 2010 add-in to provide a much improved ad-hoc data analysis tool.  Excel 2007 is pretty good at this at the moment, but not as good as it should be, and certainly not as good as some of the desktop analysis tools from ProClarity.

We don’t have all the details on Project Gemini at the moment, but here’s a video of a demo by Donald Farmer from Microsoft showing how it will work with Excel (with 20 million rows of data!):

And here’s another one showing how you might publish your analysis out to a SharePoint site:

So, lots of discussion in the SharePoint community following this post from the Microsoft SharePoint Team on preliminary system requirements for SharePoint Server 2010.

We’ve known for quite a while now that the next release of SharePoint will be 64-bit only.  The new and interesting information is:

It will require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2.  In other words, you won’t be able to use Windows Server 2003, even if it is a 64-bit version.

It will also require 64-bit SQL Server, either 2008 or 2005.  In fact Microsoft best practice suggests that in a SharePoint farm, the SQL Server boxes should be the first candidate for 64-bit technology anyway, but this certainly gives you more reason to go 64-bit.

Now it’s worth bearing in mind we are talking about a product version which isn’t even in a full beta yet, so it’s going to be a while before real deployments (probably second half of 2010 for those pioneers who aren’t afraid of arrows).  But the points covered in the post should certainly be taken into consideration, particularly if you are in the planning stage and looking at hardware and software selection.  Also Microsoft are promising a much easier upgrade path this time, which is why they’ve put the Upgrade Checker into Service Pack 2.

If you are investigating 64-bit now, I would recommend taking a look at the Combined Knowledge whitepaper on how to move MOSS2007 from 32-bit to 64-bit which you can download from here (lots of other good downloads there as well). 

You might also be interested in best practices for using virtualisation technologies in a SharePoint farm.  If so, let me point you to the set of Best Practice for Virtualizing SharePoint articles from Brian Wilson of the Microsoft UK SharePoint team.

So the rumours about SharePoint Designer 2007 being free to download from April have turned into reality, and you can now download a free copy here.  At the bottom of the download page are three videos covering SPD and future directions.  Haven’t watched these yet but could be worth a look.

But don’t forget Peter Parker’s famous quote, which is also true for SPD – With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility!

In part 1 I talked about my favourite SharePoint Knowledge Base sites, places I look to frequently for SharePoint information.  In this post I’m going to talk about resources available if you want to create your own SharePoint Knowledge Base site or site collection.

What is a Knowledge Base?

A quick check on Wikipedia gives us this:

“Human-readable knowledge bases are designed to allow people to retrieve and use the knowledge they contain. They are commonly used to complement a help desk or for sharing information among employees within an organization. They might store troubleshooting information, articles, white papers, user manuals, or answers to frequently asked questions. Typically, a search engine is used to locate information in the system, or users may browse through a classification scheme.”

And that immediately raises the question you should ask first – what information problem am I trying to address here?  For example, do I want a site where users can post questions and other users can answer them?  Or maybe I already have a set of papers, manuals or other documentation which I need to upload onto a site, possibly adding more value with SharePoint metadata such as classification, topic area, or review date?

Out of the Box Functionality

The good news is that we can get a lot of that functionality “out of the box” with SharePoint.  Judicious use of document libraries, Wiki Pages and simple custom lists will give you a nice, easy-to navigate structure for for your body of knowledge.  All of these can have an approval process added to them and I would also recommend adding a review date column where appropriate so that key personnel can get a “due for review” view of the list or library. 

Also, think about how you want to categorise your documents and articles and use one or more custom lists as lookup columns for use in views or as filters.   A good example of this approach can be seen in the End User SharePoint case study Pages and Sites in SharePoint 2007.

Microsoft’s Free Knowledge Base Template for WSS 3.0

This is a free download from Microsoft, one of the “fantastic 40 templates” and could be worth a look if you want to get some ideas.  It’s an administrator template, which means it needs to be deployed onto the server rather than uploaded as a site template (stp) file.  It includes pre-defined content types which let site users upload documents or articles and cross-reference.  Ian Morrish is hosting all 40 templates here, so you can try it out first to see if it suits your requirements.

Take Advantage of Search Keywords and Best Bets

If you are using SharePoint Server 2007 or indeed Search Server Express, make sure you are regularly reviewing search usage data and use this information to create and update search keywords and Best Bets.  Your users will get much more value out of your solution if they can quickly find what they’re looking for.

Zevenseas – Anatomy of a SharePoint Solution

Daniel McPherson has a series of posts covering the Anatomy of a SharePoint Solution.  The solution is in fact an employee blogging platform but many features of the approach used could apply to a knowledge base solution.  And some of the custom features they are using, such as Tagged Links, are available as free downloads.  They have also developed custom “Most Discussed” and “Most Viewed” features, something I am frequently asked about by clients (but not available for free unfortunately).

Other Free Stuff

Here are a couple of other free add-ons which might be useful for a knowledge base implementation (note, these are community contributions, so don’t normally come with any warranty – use at your own discretion):

SharePoint Document Rating System – lets users rate documents by applying a number of stars.

Ton Stegeman’s List Item Filter and Content by Type web parts – both provide nice ways to make it easier for users to filter and locate content.

SharePoint Knowledge Base Solution Accelerator from Bamboo Solutions

Last but by no means least, take a look at the Bamboo Knowledge Base Solution Accelerator.  The licence price for this solution is currently $2,000, but that’s pretty good if you consider how much a bespoke development might cost.  It incorporates the key features you’ll need to get your Knowledge Base up and running, including categorisation, search, questions and answers, ratings and most popular articles.  There’s a trial download available here, or for a two-minute overview of how it works, take a look at this:

I’m very impressed with the potential uses of SharePoint tasks for project management, and recently I’ve been working with the IntelliGantt Add-in for Microsoft Project 2007 to extend these capabilities.  The reason for this is that people want to create dependencies between tasks in their project (out of the box SharePoint can’t do this, but MS Project of course can) but still want to use the SharePoint tasks assignment and progress tracking capabilities.  I’ve found Bamboo Solutions Calendar Plus web part works well here too, particularly the Gantt view which hooks up nicely to the project task list.  More on this from Bamboo here.

One of the nice features of the Calendar Plus Gantt view is the option to show milestones, as coloured flags, diamonds or triangles.  The web part lets you select any Yes/No column in your task or calendar list as the milestone column.

Now, the IntelliGantt Add-in for Project 2007 lets you select a variety of Project 2007 columns which can be synchronised with SharePoint, but early on I discovered that the Milestone column wasn’t one of them.  I got in touch with John Milan from TeamDirection Inc (IntelliGantt’s vendor and developer) to suggest this as an enhancement and I’m pleased to say that within a matter of days a new build of the IntelliGantt add-in was available and included the option of exporting the MS Project milestone column to SharePoint.

In Microsoft Office Project 2007, a milestone is a reference point that marks a major event in a project and is used to monitor the project’s progress. Any task with zero duration is automatically displayed as a milestone. You can also mark any other task of any duration as a milestone using Task Information like so:

I created a small test project and identified milestones accordingly.  Here’s a list of the tasks in Project, with the milestone column showing:

Using the IntelliGantt Add-in for Microsoft Project, you can customize Workspace Settings when Sharing a project to a SharePoint list, and “push” the milestone column out to the task list:

Once the task is shared to a SharePoint site (I used a standard Project Tasks list as the starting point), IntelliGantt creates the new Milestone column as Yes/No data:

And we can create a SharePoint view of the list to show milestones only:

Now we can use the Bamboo Calendar Plus web part to display a Project Gantt.   We can create a web part page, add the Bamboo Calendar Plus web part to it, and select our Milestone column for display in the Gantt:

Which gives us a nice Gantt view in SharePoint with milestones clearly visible (here as flags):

Calendar Plus also has list filtering options, so we can choose only to show milestones as you can see here:

Which produces this type of display:

So far I’m very pleased with the way these products work together, and impressed with the rapid response from TeamDirection in adding the extra column.  The IntelliGantt add-in for Project 2007 uses .Net ClickOnce deployment technology, so licensed users will get the update automatically.  Also Bamboo’s Calendar Plus can use a list roll-up web part as its data source, so it should be possible to see specific tasks or milestones from multiple projects in one view.